


third wheeling (never felt so right)

by blatant_sock_account



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Lena Luthor Doesn't Know Kara Danvers is Supergirl, Multi, Trans Female Character, ages ago i thought lena and james had some potential, kara is a rational adult who processes her emotions efficiently and faces her problems, so i wanted to write the dynamic that i wish we'd gotten i guess, this fic is set in ummmm early season 3? vaguely? canon doesn't mean much here ngl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-10 01:58:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18928999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blatant_sock_account/pseuds/blatant_sock_account
Summary: The announcement comes at the beginning of their next game night: James and Lena, dating officially.“Wow, that’s—oh,wow,” Kara says, her heart suddenly racing. Alex frowns in her direction, and so she continues. “That’s… really something. Great! That’s—it’s great!” She smiles wide enough to feel it in her cheeks, and counts out in her head the number of seconds it takes them all to change the subject.And that’s where the problem begins.





	third wheeling (never felt so right)

**Author's Note:**

> to the like 3 people who actually are gonna read this: i salute you. you're the reason i cobbled this all together, and i hope i wound up with something okay, that shows these three together in a way that's a bit more fun.

The announcement comes at the beginning of their next game night, before Kara's even finished sniffing out which of the pizzas they ordered have meat on them. James and Lena, dating officially. Graduated from the stolen kisses at parties to standing side by side with their hands clasped together and their hips bumping, smiles on their faces as they share the news.  
  
“Woah, that’s awesome!” Winn says, holding up his bottle of beer for an unconventional toast with Lena’s glass of white wine and James’s scotch on the rocks. “I’m so glad for you guys!”  
  
“Settle down, there.” Alex snags Winn’s beer from his hand and takes a swig from it, ignoring his yelp of protest. She hands back the bottle, which he accepts with an affronted expression. “That is cool, though. You two. At least someone in this motley crew is getting some action.”  
  
(Her tone is dry, full of dark humor, but no longer strained and tight. Not like it used to be. Alex is—she’s the strongest person Kara knows.)  
  
The group turns towards Kara, and she realizes it’s her turn to comment, to give her support. And so:  
  
“Wow, that’s—oh, _wow_ ,” she says, her heart suddenly racing. Alex frowns in her direction, and so she continues. “That’s… really something. Great! That’s—it’s great!” She smiles wide enough to feel it in her cheeks, and counts out in her head the number of seconds it takes them all to change the subject.  
  
And that’s where the problem begins.  
  
-  
  
After failing spectacularly at yet another round of Pictionary, Lena tosses her head back and laughs, cheeks pink either from the wine or from the way Winn had squinted at her drawing of a supposed-squirrel and hesitantly guessed “um… a dick?” After lobbing her pencil in Winn’s general direction, Lena sits back against the couch and presses herself against James’s side, hiding her own flushed, goofy smile behind her hand.  
  
“It’s okay,” James says with a playfully valiant tone, wrapping an arm around her. “ _I_ could tell it was a squirrel.”  
  
Lena snorts. “No you couldn’t.”  
  
“I couldn’t,” he admits, stifling his own laugh. “But don’t I get brownie points for trying?”  
  
Lena rolls her eyes playfully, but pulls at the collar of his shirt anyway. Presses a quick peck to his lips and says, “Thank you for sparing my delicate feelings.”  
  
And they just… _smile_ at each other for the next few, long seconds.  
  
It’s. It’s something Kara notices, is all.  
  
-  
  
The door’s barely shut behind the last of their friends to leave for the night before Alex turns to Kara, an eyebrow raised. “Spill.”  
  
Shoot. Kara knew this was coming. She gathers up an armload of empty pizza boxes and takeout containers, and turns to carry them to the kitchen, conveniently leaving her back towards Alex. “Spill what? There’s nothing to spill. I could—I could spill these boxes, but nothing would happen, ‘cause there’s nothing in them. To Spill. So, I won’t.”  
  
(And, crap, Alex must think she’s a really terrible liar. It’s not true! She’s _great_ at keeping secrets. Coming up with things on the fly, which is a metaphor, to get herself out of tight situations. She’s practically the best liar. Except that whenever she tries to lie to Alex her face and voice and body just do this _thing_ that gives her away every single time. It’s so unfair.)  
  
When she dumps the load in the trash and turns back around, Alex, expectedly, looks unimpressed. “Don’t you dare play the ‘naïve alien that doesn’t understand idioms’ card on me, Kara. That hasn’t even worked since we were kids.”  
  
Kara fiddles with her glasses for a moment before pulling them off completely and tossing them on the counter. She folds her arms and stares resolutely at the floor. “Maybe it _does_ work, and you just don’t notice it ‘cause it works so well,” she deflects, weakly. Already knowing she’s lost before she can even finish her sentence.  
  
Alex rolls her eyes and huffs out a sigh before looping her arm around Kara’s and pulling, trying to guide her to the couch. And, well, Kara lets her. Lifts up her feet so that Alex can pull her across the room like a Kryptonian-sized balloon.  
  
It’s been a long night. She’s ready for the way that Alex gently pushes her onto the couch, gives her ponytail a playful tug as she leaves to probably go and pull the comforter off of Kara’s bed, and finally falls gracelessly to the couch herself and pulls the blanket over them both.  
  
“Kara,” Alex says, her voice soft and tentative—in direct contrast to the way she immediately presses her ice-cold bare feet into the side of Kara’s calf. “What’s going on with you? I thought you were over James.”  
  
Kara splutters, nearly chokes on her own tongue, because _what!?_ Where did… where did that even _come_ from? She’s not—there’s no way—why would Alex even think she—no. Kara loves Alex. She loves her more than anything else in the galaxy. But sometimes Alex can be a little bit obtuse when it comes to romance-y stuff. Heck, a bit oblivious, even.  
  
“That’s not—that’s not what this is,” she finally manages. “I really am happy for them. It’s just… I dunno.” She shrugs a bit, helplessly, and hears a slight creak.  
  
Alex frowns at her, thinking. “So… you’re _not_ jealous of Lena for dating James?”  
  
“Of course not!”  
  
_Creak._  
  
Alex lowers her head, brings her hand out from under the blanket to scratch at her neck. A tell that she’s nervous, one she’s never quite been able to drop. “Are you… jealous of James? For dating Lena?”  
  
“No,” Kara says, a little more snappish than intended. “I’m not!” She doesn’t want to talk about this. She just wants to relax, and forget the sickly hot feeling that’s been pooling in her stomach ever since James and Lena stepped into her apartment hand-in-hand.  
  
“Careful, the couch.”  
  
“Oh—” Kara relaxes her hand, and moves the blanket to inspect the couch arm. The filling’s a bit deformed, but luckily Alex had managed to catch her before she snapped the frame beneath. “…Oh,” she repeats. What else is there to say? “Thanks.”  
  
“Well, um,” Alex fidgets a bit before finally shifting beneath the blanket and leaning over to press herself along Kara’s side. “Do you wanna talk about it?”  
  
“No,” Kara says, and lasts about three seconds before she continues: “I just—I don’t know. I’m _not_ jealous, though. Of either of them.”  
  
(And it’s even the truth. She’s spent the whole night trying to picture herself in Lena’s position, or in James’s. Neither feels right. She doesn’t want to replace either of them in this relationship. She’s… she’s not even strictly _unhappy_ about them dating. She’s just—she’s just…)  
  
“I don’t know why I’m being like this,” she finally concludes.  
  
Alex laughs once, breathless and weak, so unlike the laugh she allows in front of others. “Well, I can’t say you came to the _best_ place for romantic advice, Kar.”  
  
(Because Alex is improving. She _is_. The sparkle in her eye and the characteristic challenge present in anything she says has slowly been returning over the past few weeks. But it’s not always steady progress, and some nights Kara can still hear her clinking bottles around in her apartment followed by a long, worrying period of silence. But Alex has promised that she’ll try to value her own feelings more in the future. That she’ll try to remember that Kara will always want to help her through her own hard times. To remember that her pain is as real as Kara’s; never lesser. And, in exchange, Kara has reluctantly promised that she won’t break into Maggie Sawyer’s apartment with a couple of aluminum rods and weld all her furniture to the ceiling.)  
  
Still, Kara tilts her head to the side to lean against Alex’s. “I wouldn’t go anywhere else,” she says. Because it’s the truth. No matter how well Alex knows romance, she knows _Kara_ , and that’s what matters.  
  
“Hm,” Alex chuckles, her voice cutting through the silence of Kara’s apartment. “Look at us, a regular pair of romance gurus. Two real-life Casanovas.”  
  
“Masters,” Kara adds. She pats around the couch to find the remote that had fallen between the cushions a few hours back. “But at least I have you to go get us some ice cream from the freezer.” She gets a hold of the remote and turns the TV on, switching to a channel showing cheesy sci-fi movies. Alex’s favorite.  
  
“Not a chance in hell,” Alex sighs, leaning further against Kara, her whole body relaxing into her for an impromptu sisters’ night.  
  
-  
  
And, no, Kara doesn’t do something as immature as _avoiding_ them. It’s just, she’s been really busy lately. She’s thought a lot about things, and she thinks her friends are right. She _has_ been neglecting her job at Catco a bit recently in favor of handling easily-contained threats as Supergirl. And now’s just a good time to get caught back up with work, is all. She’s got a whole busy schedule of events to attend and interviews to record out of the office, and when she does have to come in she busies herself with typing up her hastily scribbled notes and triple-checking her finished articles.  
  
(Because, Rao, she gets her Earth languages confused _one time_ and Snapper never lets her live it down!  
  
And, well, because… now that she knows Cat Grant is keeping an eye on her, something that might be pride burns hot in her stomach, keeps her driven, pushes her to be better.)  
  
But! The point is she’s not _intentionally_ going out of her way to avoid Lena and James.  
  
Which is why, when James suddenly steps in front of her desk one completely uneventful Friday afternoon, greeting her casually with a folder showing the planned layout for their next issue in one hand and what looks to be two bags of lunch in the other, Kara startles and nearly puts her hands through her keyboard.  
  
“Woah, hey!” James holds his hand out in front of him, as if offering the bags of food to Kara as an apology. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. Really, I didn’t even know I _could_.” He chuckles, offering Kara a little half-shrug. “I just… um, well I got the proposed layouts printed, and I wanted to see what you thought of them…?”  
  
(It’s a side he rarely allows to show at work. There’d been such a fuss following his promotion, and although James will stand tall and steady during conferences, Kara knows that he’s felt the pressure. He wants to succeed, and not just for financial reasons. It’s personal. She knows the feeling.)  
  
“Plus, I brought burritos,” James adds. And, well, that seals the deal.  
  
“Well, in that case, how could I say no?” Kara reaches across her desk to snatch one of the bags from him and pulls it to her lap to rummage through. “Did you get that weirdness with the cover shoot saturation fixed?”  
  
“Yeah,” James says, and it’s only then that Kara notices the way he’s still standing, stiff and awkward, in front of her desk. He looks to the side, takes a slow breath. “Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. But I haven’t really seen you around much lately.”  
  
“Oh,” Kara says, frowning down at the bag. “Well, I’ve just been—”  
  
But the ringing of her DEO phone cuts off any excuse she could have come up with, and when she hears James’s own phone start to vibrate in his pocket, she knows there are more important matters to focus on.  
  
They leave Catco together, not needing to say another word.  
  
-  
  
"We need to rework the suit," Kara announces, pacing around the DEO Medbay as Alex inspects a wound on James’s arm.  
  
(She used to resist, to protest that this _really isn’t my job, Kara_. But by now she’s given in, seemingly accepted the fact that Supergirl will barrel her way past every other doctor in the facility to find her.)  
  
Kara turns on her heel, abrupt enough that she can feel the tiling protest beneath her feet. “Can’t you have Winn make it—I don’t know… better?”  
  
“Kara,” James’s voice is soft and slow and _entirely too calm_ for someone holding out his arm to be stitched back together. “I told you, it’s fine. Just a little scratch. Relax.”  
  
“ _Little!?_ ” James winces at the near-hysterical pitch to her voice, and Kara forces herself to take a deep breath. Long and slow. “James, you could have _died_ —”  
  
“Okay, enough.” Alex cuts Kara off, pausing her suturing to glare briefly in Kara’s direction. “We may not have bulletproof skin, but humans aren’t _that_ fragile. It’s a minor arm laceration; it’ll leave a small scar. Give James a little credit here. He can handle himself.”  
  
“It—it’s not about _that_ ,” Kara stutters, taken aback. It’s not! And Alex was supposed to agree with her! How could Alex _not_ agree with her after seeing the way he’d staggered away from the latest alien threat to the city with blood seeping through his fingers as he clutched his wounded arm? It’s unfair and wrong and…  
  
And it should have been her. She’s the one who should have taken that final, desperate blow. Because she _can_ take it. Because it’s her duty to protect the people of this city, her responsibility. Because no matter how good James is, no matter how bright his soul, no matter how inspired his optimism and determination makes her feel, he’s still just a—  
  
Well. Okay. Maybe Alex has a point. Kara sighs, drops her head to rub at her temples. “…Yeah,” she says, finally. “Okay.” She takes a cautious step closer to the table where James sits, careful to focus on the steady beat of his heart rather than the sound of Alex’s needle pushing through the surface of his skin. She meets his eyes with a weak smile, and when he grins back at her she hops up onto the table next to him, nudging her shoulder gently against his uninjured arm.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, looking down at their legs. James bumps his shoulder right back against her own, and she looks up to meet his eyes. Really meet them, for the first time since he’d donned the mask earlier. Deep and brown and _kind_ in a way that leaves her chest full to bursting with warmth. “I know you’re great at what you do. And I know it’s your choice, too. It’s just…sometimes—” she shrugs a little, helplessly. “Sometimes I worry.”  
  
James raises an eyebrow at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Kara Danvers,” he says. “You? Worrying? I can’t believe I lived to see the day.”  
  
“Hey, hey,” Alex warns, although her tone is playful. “You be nice to my baby sister when I have a needle stuck in your arm.” She waves her needle driver in front of James’s face, and Kara drops her head into her hands and groans loudly over James’s soft chuckle.  
  
“ _Alex_ ,” she whines.  
  
“Fine,” Alex sighs, snipping the remaining suture with significantly more flourish than strictly necessary and setting her tools back on an aluminum tray. She looks closely at James’s arm for a moment before, seemingly satisfied, she nods and steps away, heading towards the door. “Well, I’ll go check on the lab team to see if they’ve identified the alien-of-the-week’s species yet. In the meantime,” she pauses, tilts her head to give James a final glance over her shoulder, “try to avoid the business end of any more raptor claws ‘til those stitches come out in a week. Remember, that’s what you’ve got your sidekick for.”  
  
She closes the door behind her, ignoring Kara’s shout of protest.  
  
In the silence of the Medbay, James slings an arm briefly over Kara’s shoulder to give her a friendly pat. “Hey, it’s okay,” he says gently. But then: “I think you make a great sidekick.”  
  
“You two are ganging up on me.” Kara exaggerates her pout, sticking her lip out and everything. If James is gonna be mean to her, she’ll be mean right back.  
  
(It had started a while back, their running non-argument about which of them would be delegated to the role of sidekick. Back when she’d tried to stop him, tried to convince him being a hero was too dangerous. She’d hovered over him on the streets, like a worried mother watching her child leave for their first day at school, ready to dive down at the first sight of trouble. Causing stress all around and leaving a thick tension straining their friendship.  
  
“This is why he didn’t tell you, you know,” Alex had said, and let Kara sob her frustration out on her shoulder.  
  
In the end, the solution had been Winn’s idea. A little unofficial scoreboard he’d set up called, despite Kara’s protests, ‘The Super Official Rank of Badassery’.  
  
“You think you can keep up with me?” James had asked with a playful wink. And from then the contest was on.)  
  
“We are, a little bit,” James admits, looking not-at-all guilty about it. After a few more moments of playful ribbing, his expression turns serious. “Actually, Kara, I wanted to talk to you about something. About me and Lena.”  
  
“Oh,” Kara says. Suddenly feeling smaller, pulling her cape over her legs like a blanket and fiddling with one of the corners.  
  
(Because sometimes the lines between Supergirl and Kara aren’t very clear. Sometimes when her friends look at her she worries all they’re seeing is _Supergirl_ , and sometimes when she’s been too late, too slow, too weak, she feels like a little girl playing dress-up.  
  
But what better to highlight those lines than a sharp reminder of the fact that no matter how hard she tries she can never seem to get this ‘friend’ thing just right. _Supergirl_ wouldn’t feel a sickly twisting deep in her gut when she thought about her two closest friends being happy together. _Supergirl_ wouldn’t wallow in self-pity and try to run away from her problems. _Supergirl_ wouldn’t be… jealous—confusedly and without direction, a mess of negative feelings.  
  
But Kara would.)  
  
“Well,” James hesitates, and Kara can see his cheeks actually _flush_ just slightly. Something she hasn’t seen since the two of them were— “I want to tell her that I’m Guardian.” He turns to her, filled with a nervous determination that Kara’s become well familiar with during her own years on Earth. “I’m going to tell her tonight.”  
  
“Oh!” She can feel a slow smile spreading across her face. Things between James and Lena must be serious, if he’s planning on telling her. His anonymity as the Guardian is just as important to him as Kara’s is to her. If not moreso, given both James’s greater public profile as a lead photographer and interim CEO at CatCo, and also Guardian’s adamant promise to protect the people of National City from police brutality just as he would any other crime. “Well, that’s really great! I’m so happy for you two!”  
  
And the sad thing is, is that she really means it. Despite all her… _feelings_ that she can’t even properly figure out, she _is_ happy that her two best friends are so happy with each other. It makes her so proud, thinking of the way James had once been suspicious of Lena’s intentions based on her last name alone, and now they’re close enough that he’s about to trust her with his biggest secret.  
  
“Thanks,” James says, nudging against Kara’s shoulder again. “I’m glad you think so. But, well.” He hesitates, frowns a bit as if searching for words. Finally, he just sighs. “Kara, you of all people know how smart Lena is. When I tell her about Guardian, you know it’ll only be a matter of time before she connects the dots to Supergirl, too.”  
  
A chill rushes down Kara’s spine. “Oh… that’s—you’re right.” She shuts her eyes, the fluorescent lighting suddenly too much, too bright.  
  
She hasn’t… she hasn’t told Lena yet. And she _knows_ she should, she knows Lena would never betray her, she knows she can trust Lena no matter how high the stakes.  
  
And yet.  
  
There’s just something that feels so _right_ about taking a moment to step out of her life and fully into the role of Kara Danvers, cheery human reporter who smiles often and laughs bright. Who spends her free time painting sunsets over desert landscapes and sharing outdated dog memes with her friends on Facebook. Who has never had a human die slowly in her arms when she arrived to help a moment too late, shuddering and coughing blood onto her family’s crest as she tries carry them to safety without hurting them further. Who never struggles with control, who has no power or dark thoughts to be corrupted. Who never wakes up with a jolt after a vivid nightmare of her mother and father burning, being torn to pieces, crushed under rubble as the planet explodes around them.  
  
Kara Danvers is bubbly, smiles easily, and even the act of pretending to be human has become more second-nature than she’s quite willing to admit.  
  
(She’s a coward, she thinks to herself on her darker days. She hides herself away and stalls, stalls, stalls coming out to the people she cares about, because she’s afraid they’ll reject her. She wants to selfishly soak up whatever happiness she can get, afraid of the moment it will be taken away from her. Clinging to the present, as flawed and dishonest as it may be, because she’s afraid of change.)  
  
“Kara,” James’s voice brings her away from her spiraling thoughts. “Let’s talk about this. I don’t—I don’t want to do anything that’ll hurt you. But I don’t want to lie to her either.”  
  
“No, no—you’re right,” she says, although her voice comes out strained. “That’s—you—she deserves to know.” She gathers up more of her cape into her hand and fusses with it, the only thing she has that can’t snap or tear from her mindless fidgeting. “About both of us.”  
  
“Yeah,” James says. He brings his arm back around Kara and pulls her close. No jokes this time, just the warmth of his skin against her own and the steady, safe feeling that always inexplicably rushes through her when she leans her head against his shoulder. “It’s the right thing to do.”  
  
“It is.” But that doesn’t make it any easier. They both know that.  
  
-  
  
Kara flies out somewhere over the Pacific, somewhere where there’s nobody around to see her except the birds and the sea life. She flies up high enough to twirl the mist of the thick marine clouds around her fingers and curls up into a ball in the sky, pressing her head against her knees and clutching at her legs hard enough to bruise.  
  
(Sometimes things boil over. She smiles and she smiles and she smiles until she _can’t_ smile anymore, until one tiny thing brings up every hurt she thought she’d shoved away safely into the far corners of her mind. Until her hands shake and her eyes sting and her skin burns with the heat of an exploding planet.)  
  
Tonight, right now, maybe right this very moment, James is in National City. Maybe at his apartment, maybe at Lena’s. Somewhere private, for sure. Right now, he’s telling Lena about Guardian. And about Supergirl.  
  
And right now, Kara’s hiding.  
  
She’d been invited, of course. James had practically pleaded with her to come. But then she’d imagined the scene in her mind, had pictured the two of them sitting close together, sharing an important and private conversation. Pictured the expression on Lena’s face when James told her the truth—wide-eyed and yet stoic, afraid to show her own hurt. Pictured James resting his hand on Lena’s arm to explain his motivations, that there was more to the secret identities than just trust. Pictured the two of them leaning their heads close to talk to each other—figure out what it would mean for _them_ , while Kara sat nearby, invading the moment like some sort of voyeur.  
  
(Because that’s what this confession is about: _them_. It’s not—it wouldn’t be fair to show up and make the moment about herself. Which is all she knows how to do.)  
  
But she’d pictured it all in her head, and something inside of her had _twisted_ tight and hot. And now she just can’t _stop_ picturing it. And she just—  
  
She hates this feeling.  
  
_Supergirl_ , she thinks sarcastically. The woman of steel, the maid of might. Who can push back an accelerating space frigate with the force of her will, but who runs away from Kara’s problems.  
  
She lifts her head and screams. Shouts out all her frustration—with the situation, with herself, with _everything_ —into the chilly night sky until she can feel her lungs strain, and the air around her condenses into thick, white clouds, falling all around her as tiny hailstones that will melt before they even reach the ocean’s surface.  
  
She _hates_ this feeling.  
  
(Years ago, before she’d learned to see Earth as anything but a curse—back when she was called a different name, when every movement was a carefully-planned test of precision—she’d hid away in her and Alex’s shared bathroom late one night, angrily splashing hot water from the sink onto her cheeks, the running taps like thunder to her ears. Another pair of mangled, twisted glasses tossed to the floor reminding her of her failure, couldn't do _anything_ —  
  
“Hey, hello? What the hell!?” Alex called out, knocking at the door only to barge inside just seconds later. “Dude, it’s like two in the morning!”  
  
“On Krypton, an heir to the name of a noble House was never meant to show his tears,” she muttered through her hands, clasped over her face as if she could just force the emotions away. “It’s _juvenile_. We’re—he’s supposed to be above that.”  
  
Alex stood in the doorway, frowning. Hesitant. Still trying to figure out how to be a sister, still trying to make herself _want_ to be. “Uh, okay.” Alex lowered her head, scratched for a quick moment at the back of her neck. “But that sounds like, um… it's a pretty dumb rule…? So maybe you don’t have to, like, go crazy about trying to follow it?”  
  
“It’s not dumb.” She grit her teeth, quickly dipped her hands under the running water to splash more against her stinging eyes. The only thing that was _dumb_ was that this stupid Earth faucet ran so loudly and didn’t get hot enough to scald her flushed cheeks and wasn’t as _good_ as the basins at home.  
  
“Okay, yeah, sure…” Alex stuttered, crossing her arms over her chest, defensive. “But, like... you could still let me help? You know, on Earth, humans are allowed to have feelings.”  
  
“I’m _not_ human!” She squeezed her eyes shut and bent forward over the sink and curled her shaking hands into fists, afraid of her own strength. Not wanting to crumble the countertop beneath her fingertips in a moment of distraction. Not wanting to open her eyes, because she couldn’t tell anymore what was built-up tears and what was heat. Not wanting to look at her _stupid_ reflection.  
  
“Yeah, clearly,” she heard Alex mutter. And then: “Well, fine. Guess I’ll just go back to bed and pretend I can’t hear you having a freak-out like ten feet away.”  
  
Alex shut the door when she left, leaving her alone in the bathroom. And that was when the first tears had spilled down her cheeks.)  
  
She cries now, too, hidden away behind the clouds, her senses numbed to everything except the call of birds and the gentle wind blowing around her.  
  
She doesn’t know what to do.  
  
Because it’s not just about tonight, of course. Not just about James telling Lena about their alter-egos. It’s about the hollow feeling that’s taken up residence in her chest and that pangs when she thinks of James and Lena together, happier to spend time alone as a couple rather than be around Kara. This strange feeling she can’t identify, where she wants them both to be happy with each other, wants their relationship to thrive—and yet wants just a little piece of what they have together for herself, as well. She’ll hear them playfully bantering through the walls of James’s office, see James give Lena a subtle, encouraging touch to her shoulder before she leaves to head back to L-Corp for a board meeting, track the little spot of lipstick that clings to the side of James’s cheek when he comes back from lunch… and she burns with misdirected envy.  
  
She doesn’t know what to do, because she can’t even tell what it is she _wants_.  
  
(And isn’t it always how that goes? She’s lived on Earth longer than she ever had on Krypton, by this point, and yet she still manages to feel like an outsider half the time. Alien, and not just in the physical sense. Still times where it feels like everybody around her is in on some grand secret that she’d never been told.  
  
Being Supergirl is simple. Or rather, straightforward. Despite the pain and loss and mistakes that being a hero brings, she’s never been at a loss for what to _do_ , how to move forward. She knows how to deflect heavy blows and how to goad armed suspects away from crowded areas. She knows how to stop bullets with her skin and how to lift falling buildings, bridges, airplanes. And, above all else, she knows how to _act_. Knows what to say. Because Supergirl isn’t meant to fit in, isn’t meant to act like a person at all, much less a human. She’s meant to be approachable, unintimidating—but never _relatable_. An idol, as unattainable as she is inhuman.  
  
Being Supergirl is straightforward, and being Kara Danvers is blissfully simple. It’s being _herself_ that she still hasn’t figured out. Not quite a human, but not entirely Kryptonian anymore, either.)  
  
She lets herself drop down from the clouds and flies low above the ocean. Drifting slowly, letting herself be blown by the wind, and trying to let the sound of the water beneath her calm her frayed nerves. Trying to slow the stream of thoughts all rushing through her mind at once. Her head doesn’t _ache_ , exactly, but she’s so tired.  
  
Nights like this wear on her, leave her frazzled and anxious and unable to shoo away negative thoughts like she normally can.  
  
(Because she does think about Krypton, every day. She misses her family, her culture, her _home_ more than she can express with the words of any language she knows.  
  
And yet sometimes she wonders.  
  
Who would she have grown up to be, on Krypton? The person she is now is so unlike the softspoken child of nobility, the soon-to-be-youngest member of the Science Guild, commonly known—although never revered, never thought of as otherworldly—for academic capability rather than heroic deeds. Would she have remained that person when she grew up? Would she have listened to the final pleas of her aunt? Would she have continued her father’s work inventing new forms of virus to exterminate unwelcome species of aliens like some sort of pest? Would she have noticed the way that the Guild’s experimentation and technology was causing irreparable harm that could only continue for so long? Would she have _cared?_ Or would she be yet another Kryptonian who turned a blind eye to unwanted warnings—silent and complicit and regal and son, son, _son_.  
  
Could she have been happy?  
  
It’s not a thought she likes to entertain.)  
  
She sinks even lower, closer toward the swells of water. She should head home soon. She doesn’t know how long the flight back will take, and she’ll need to eat before she goes to sleep. But right now, nothing feels more unappealing than flying through the open window into her empty apartment—lights off to save on the electricity bill and all-too-quiet aside from the chitchat of her neighbors bleeding in through the walls, the sound of distant laugher or music.  
  
(She doesn’t deal well with loneliness. She gives each person she cares for a piece of her heart, and when they leave her they take that little piece of herself with them. She invests herself in her relationships completely, and when others don’t return that intimate trust it leaves her feeling lost and wilted. Afraid. It’s what had happened with—what had happened with her ex. And even still, when he’d left her she’d felt the foundations of her being crumbling under the weight of her grief.  
  
She’s risked everything she has to keep the people she cares for safely in her life, in the past. And she’d do it again, in a heartbeat. But now, even as she feels like she’s watching her two closest friends drift slowly away from her, she feels paralyzed. There’s nobody to catch, there’s nothing to stop, there’s nobody to _turn_ her desperate, terrified anger towards.  
  
And so she turns it towards herself.)  
  
She dives into the frigid Pacific waters, surrounding herself with nothing but murky water and unfamiliar sounds until she imagines she can feel the tips of her fingers going numb.  
  
-  
  
She gets home late in the night, with her hair still damp and a bag of takeout from a little mom and pop place on the other side of the city, too loyal to tell the media that their store was frequented by Supergirl, and too polite to ask why she’d had to wring water out of her cape before stepping in.  
  
She tosses her damp suit into the bathtub and changes into a tank top and some underwear before collapsing onto the couch with a carton of chow mein. Her phone buzzes where she’d left it resting on her coffee table, and with a groan Kara sleepily fumbles around until her hand knocks into it.  
  
She’s got two missed calls from James, and another from Lena. Which. She doesn’t even know how to deal with right now. But she also has a few texts from Alex and Lucy (things like “ _kara you gotta help me im being cyberbullied by your sister and youre the only one who can make her stop pls kara you’re my only ho_ ” and “ _Hey, I’m sure Lucy’s bugging you right now, can you please let her know that inviting her to stay at my place when she visits doesn’t actually count as a threat? Also tell her to suck it._ ”) and also, oh.  
  
Seven texts from Winn, all in the last few minutes. All links to such quality articles as “These Heartwarming Animal Friendships Will Brighten Your Day!”  
  
He must have been doing work at the DEO tonight. Must have spotted her location using the tracking device in her suit. He won’t press her for details, and she sort of loves him for it. She suspects he understands a lot more than he lets on, and is more familiar with trying to shove away negativity than most people know.  
  
She sends him a cascade of emojis, and moments later gets one in return. And that night she falls asleep with a welcome feeling of calmness.  
  
She’s okay. She has her friends. The rest can work itself out.  
  
-  
  
She runs into Lena at Catco the next Monday on the way to the breakroom to see if anybody had brought in breakfast that day. Lena smiles professionally and waves as she passes in the other direction, and Kara feels her own hand waving vaguely back reflexively.  
  
“Wait!” She turns on her heel to face Lena, feeling like—like she has to say _something_. Lena turns slowly, an eyebrow raised in question and her lips so, so red that Kara temporarily forgets what she meant to say. “Um, so… James told you? Over the weekend?”  
  
Lena nods, wraps her arms around her chest. “He did.” She nods at another employee walking down the hall. “It was… unexpected.”  
  
Kara fusses with one of the buttons on her shirt. “Are we, um… are we okay?”  
  
Lena steps closer and rests her hand on Kara’s arm, sending a small jolt of warmth all throughout her. “Of course we are, Kara. It’s quite fine.” She smiles, only slightly stiff. “But right now I have to get to this department meeting.” She tightens her fingers around Kara’s arm briefly before stepping away and continuing down the hall, leaving Kara to awkwardly watch her back.  
  
And that’s that, apparently.  
  
-  
  
Except, no, that’s _not_ that. Kara makes it another two hours before she pushes away from her desk and stomps around Catco in search of Lena. She needs… she needs to at least _talk_ to her.  
  
She finds Lena on the way to the plain and unassuming desk she’d had brought in to the corner of the office in an attempt to ‘avoid that dark and brooding Luthor image’, and she takes Lena’s hand and guides them to an old conference room. Empty, filled with boxes of years-old paperwork, and, most importantly, private. She locks the door behind them either way.  
  
“Well,” Lena says, a little breathless, “I’ll admit, this isn’t how I was expecting my first office tryst to go.”  
  
“Wh-what? I—” Kara stutters, eyes wide. Lena swings their still-linked hands slightly, and Kara squeaks, drops Lena’s hand and flaps her own uselessly. “I—no—that wasn’t—” And, dang it, why did Lena always have to say things like _that?_ Like she just likes seeing Kara all flustered, or something! She—they’re here for a _reason!_  
  
Kara clears her throat, drops her hands. “N-no, I mean… we should talk. About things.”  
  
Lena’s smile falters, and she nods, suddenly a little stiff. Adopting the overly formal tone she uses to hide away her own hesitation. “Right, yes. Things.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kara says. And, crap, she really hadn’t planned on anything to actually _say_. Or rather, she’d deliberately stopped herself from trying to imagine this conversation, because every scenario she’d come up with involved Lena being rightfully upset. “It’s just… I know you said we were okay, earlier. But I sort of wanted to make sure, you know?” She pauses, licks her lips. “And, um, also to apologize. For lying all this time. And for not even being the one to tell you. I just—I thought you and James should have a moment, I guess.”  
  
Kara trails off, leaving a moment of awkward silence to linger between them. She reaches up to fuss with her glasses, but instead pauses with her hand hovering just by the arm. _Might as well_ , is what she tries to tell herself when she gently slips the glasses from her face, folds them, and slips them through one of her belt loops.  
  
(But, really, it’s more than that. She finds herself nervous still, even with her secret no longer weighing down on her chest.  
  
Because, despite her friends’ teasing, the glasses were never really a disguise. They were security. Not just for her senses, but for herself as a whole as well. They make her feel a little more human.  
  
Whatever that means.)  
  
“Surprise,” she says with a weak, breathless laugh.  
  
Lena smiles a little at that one. “Surprise, indeed.”  
  
“Right.” Kara smiles, but it comes off strained. Because right now things feel a little like they’re _not_ okay, and she isn’t really sure how to fix it. “So… yeah. I’m sorry. And that’s, um. What I wanted to say, I guess.”  
  
“Thank you,” Lena says, quiet. She wraps her arms around the front of her chest, lets her shoulders sag a little bit, and Kara at least appreciates that Lena’s not trying to play this off as nothing. “And… I’m sorry, too. For making this hard. It’s… it’s all been a lot to take in.” Lena lowers her head, and, if Kara lets herself, she can hear the sound of Lena’s slightly-racing heartbeat, the sound of Lena’s fingertips fussing with the material of her shirt just out of sight.  
  
“And I _was_ upset, at first,” she continues. “I thought it was because, well.” Her lips quirk up into a hollow smile. “You know why. Especially since it seems—it seems like _everybody_ knew but me.” Lena lets out a watery laugh, and Kara’s so, _so_ tempted to burst into a ramble to try to comfort her. To stop Lena right there and tell her it was _never_ about that, that Lena’s _amazing_. But she bites her lip and lets Lena finish, because. Because she owes Lena that much.  
  
“So I was… upset, yes. But James and I have been talking a lot about things since then. He’s helped me understand his reasons. And yours. And…” Lena hesitates, looks off to the side. “And I do get it. Wanting to be someone else for a while. It’s… I _get_ it.”  
  
Lena shrugs a little, as if to brush the entire thing off, but suddenly the two feet between them feels like an entire galaxy’s worth of space, and Kara steps closer to her, wraps her arm around Lena’s shoulder and lets their heads bump gently together. Because, oh, how many times has Lena wished she could step out of her own life? Adopt a fake name and a fake life, one where she could surround herself with love and support from the very beginning. A life where she could smile easily and without fear of the biased news coverage or the boardroom coups or the assassination attempts that the next day might bring. Where each step she takes doesn’t have to be over a razed battlefield. A life like she should have had all along.  
  
Lena sighs, slow and shaky, and tilts her head into the touch, practically nuzzling into Kara’s side until Kara can feel each soft exhale cool against her neck. “Your trust means so much to me,” Lena confesses, her voice barely above a whisper. “I… I was afraid that this whole time you didn’t really trust me. And—and of what that would mean. About you, but also about—” She cuts herself off there, but Kara thinks she can fill in the blanks.  
  
“I’ll always trust you,” she says easily. Because it’s _true_. Ever since they first met, Kara had known that Lena was different than the cold, calculating Luthor the world presumed her to be—an impression she’d felt just as much as a punch to the gut, and one that sometimes left her just as breathless, too.  
  
“I—I…” Kara hears Lena’s heart stutter in her chest, and she reluctantly drops her arm and takes a step back to let Lena _breathe_. Except, now Kara can see Lena’s face, all bare and open and heartfelt. Cheeks flushed and eyes shining. “Thank you, Kara,” she says again. “That means more than you know.” She lets her arms slide down from their protective position crossed over her chest and instead fiddles with her fingers.  
  
(“The one bad habit my mother could never quite scare out of me,” Lena had once quipped. But Kara hadn’t laughed at the joke.)  
  
“Will you tell me more?” Lena asks slowly, hesitantly. “About yourself?”  
  
Kara smiles, warmth blooming in her chest. “I’d love to.” It’s a foreign feeling, this excitement. This chance to _tell_ someone who she really is. Most people—even some of her friends, a long time ago—tended to just assume. She was either a klutzy small town girl trying to find her way in the big city, a heroic entity who for all practical purposes faded into thin air when she left the scene of an attack, or a threat to the humans who truly belonged on the planet. It was rare that she had the opportunity to just _talk_. About everything: good, bad, painful, easy, difficult, past, current. So rare, that for a moment she lets herself forget the reasons she’d kept her secret in the first place in favor of the feeling of bringing somebody new into her weird little family. “What sort of stuff has James already told you about me, though? Embarrassing stories?”  
  
Lena laughs, bringing up her hand to cover the way her nose crinkles. “No, sadly not. He, uh…” She drops her hand and looks briefly away. “He didn’t say much, honestly. About the personal stuff, I mean. He said it would be better if you told me yourself. Which is why I was hoping…” She trails off, offering Kara a weak smile.  
  
“Well,” Kara says. Her throat feeling thick, because something about the hopeful expression on Lena’s face makes her just want to talk and talk and talk. “Did he tell you my Kryptonian name?”  
  
Lena lifts an eyebrow, leaning in to give Kara her full attention, as if captivated by the possibility of information she hasn’t already had a chance to learn. “No. Will you tell me?”  
  
Kara nods. “Kara Zor-El. Of the House of El.” She says the words with just a hint of pride, even still, even after the truth of her family’s betrayal has come to light. Because, despite it all, she loves the fact that their memories can live on in the name she carries with her.  
  
“Kara Zor-El,” Lena repeats carefully, a slow smile spreading across her face. “It’s a pretty name.”  
  
And, admittedly, Kara _beams_. Because she _loves_ her name. And it sounds so nice to hear her friends say it, to hear _Lena_ say it, after all this time.  
  
And so, _admittedly_ , Kara rambles just a bit. “Thank you!” she says. And then: “I picked it myself!” Because she’s feeling confident, feeling proud. “It comes from one of the lesser gods of Krypton, and a constellation. Kara was thought to be the patron of the arts. And—and Zor-El was the name of my father. He was a climatologist, and a member of the Science Guild, like I was gonna be.” She cuts herself off there, offering Lena a slightly sheepish smile. Because, well, she’s just excited to talk, is all. And sometimes it feels like words just spill out of her mouth with no warning. “So, yeah. That’s my name.”  
  
Lena grins the same way she always grins when Kara gets lost on a train of thought. “Well, it’s very ‘you’,” she says, and then cocks her head to the side. “Is that a Kryptonian custom? Choosing your own name?”  
  
Kara takes a deep breath, doesn’t let her smile falter. “No, actually. I changed my name when I was younger. I’m trans. Transgender.” She keeps her tone calm, even as she can feel a slight heat on her cheeks.  
  
“Oh,” Lena says, eyes owlish. Looking as if that was the last thing she expected to hear. And something deep down in Kara’s chest tightens.  
  
(The ball of nerves that catch in the back of her throat when talking about her gender, her identity, her experiences, has diminished over the years, but it still returns to choke her up with each new moment like this, each new coming out. She’s nowhere near the stuttering and confused little girl she’d been years ago, nervously fumbling her words trying to talk to Eliza as she clutched Alex’s hand through a worn oven mitt. But still, each time she wants to come out to someone important in her life she inevitably finds the same anxious thoughts returning to the back of her mind. It’s stupid, she tries to tell herself, because she _knows_ Lena is kind and wonderful and, duh, super smart, but her heart still races in her chest, and she still feels as if she’s waiting for a verdict.)  
  
“Okay,” Lena says, and Kara can finally _exhale_. “Thank you—thank you for telling me.”  
  
“Yeah, I, um, figured it was sort of a ‘sharing’-type of day,” Kara says. Then cringes slightly, because, no, that’s not really it at all. “Er, I mean. I just, um. I wanted you to know. You’re important to me.” And that doesn’t seem like enough either. Not to express just exactly how much Lena’s opinions mean to her.  
  
But it seems to work well enough anyway, because Lena smiles at her and opens her arms for a hug. And, okay, the gesture looks a little awkward and choreographed, but Kara thinks that for all the times that she’s pulled Lena into a tight hug, Lena’s rarely ever asked for one on her own. So, really, the only proper response is for Kara to sniffle once before scooping Lena up into a hug that lifts her right off the floor.  
  
(Lena used to be a truly terrible hugger. Which had left Kara sort of appalled because—because how can somebody be _bad_ at _hugging?_ But she’d tamped down her own anger at… _everybody_ , on Lena’s behalf, and instead held onto her even more tightly, ignoring the way Lena stood stiff between her arms, heart racing.  
  
Now, though, Lena presses her face against Kara’s shoulder and clings to the back of her shirt like she never wants to let go.)  
  
It’s been so long, since they’ve had a moment like this. So long since Kara actually felt like she was Lena’s best friend, like they were mutually important to each other. And she knows it’s just the excitement of a new relationship that’s caused it (she _knows_ ; the first time James came over to her place for game night with Alex and Winn she’d been so distracted by his smile and kind eyes and tight shirt that she’d smashed two different Life cars and their accompanying drivers into unidentifiable lumps of plastic before Alex had refused to give her another). But the thought that this is the first _real_ conversation she’s had with Lena in weeks just makes her cling tighter, press her nose against Lena’s hair.  
  
“I miss you,” she says.  
  
“I miss you, too.” Lena’s words are muffled slightly with the way her face presses against Kara’s neck, and Kara finally releases her hold, stepping back to look at Lena with a hopeful expression.  
  
“Really?” It’s a lot, to know that she’s not the only one feeling the distance between them like a chain around her chest, pulling tighter with each passing day. To know that Lena still _cares_ , despite it all. To know that she hasn’t been forgotten, left behind.  
  
“Of course, Kara.” And, oh, Lena’s giving her this _look_ that she can’t quite interpret. A _look_ that feels as if it could pierce right through Kara. Except, in a pleasant way. A look that sends a little tingle down her spine.  
  
And then Lena smiles, and the little tingle turns straight into a knockout punch. “You know,” she says, her smile curling into a smirk. “I was sort of worried, when you said you wanted to talk. I thought next you were gonna say you’ve been Wonder Woman this whole time, too.”  
  
Kara snorts, covers her goofy smile with her hand. She’s just… Lena’s a great friend, is all. “No, no, could you even imagine?” The two of them giggle together, and for a moment it feels like no time has passed at all since their last late night spent together. “I have met her, though.” She waggles her eyebrows, and Lena finally breaks, laughing loudly at work where anybody could hear her.  
  
“Oh my god,” she says, breathless. “That would make sense, I suppose. I’ll admit I’m jealous, though. Who wouldn’t want to meet her?” She laughs once more, just a quick little thing, with her cheeks slightly pink. But then she meets Kara’s eyes, her smile fading away into a serious expression. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you, isn’t there?”  
  
It’s a statement rather than an accusation, which Kara is grateful for. And so she simply nods. “Yeah,” she says, “but I want you to know.”  
  
Lena ducks her head a bit, as if to conceal the darkening flush to her cheeks, the way her smile lights up her face. And it makes something _ache_ within Kara to tell Lena that she’s got the prettiest smile Kara’s ever seen, that sometimes Kara forgets how to breathe around her.  
  
But when Kara opens her mouth to speak, what comes out is actually, “So, you and Guardian, huh?” And she hates herself, just a little bit, for the way her voice catches in her throat when she says it, when really she’s so _happy_ for the two of them.  
  
But if Lena notices anything off about her tone, she doesn’t mention it. “Yeah,” she says, finally looking up to meet Kara’s eyes again despite the way her cheeks still burn red. “He’s just… he’s a real great guy.”  
  
She sounds—she sounds so content. Calm and steady in a way she’s rarely been given the opportunity to experience during her time in National City. And just that thought’s enough to make Kara smile too. Enough to make her push aside her own weird _feelings_ and just be a good friend.  
  
“He really is,” Kara says. “He’s—he helped me so much, when I first came out as Supergirl. I always knew I could come to him for advice, or… or even when things went wrong. I’d always tell him that he made Supergirl a better hero, because it’s _true_. He did. And sometimes, looking back, I find it so hard to believe that the Guardian was actually a surprise to me, 'cause James has always had this fire in his eyes, you know? Like, he’s always been so driven and passionate and _good_ and—”  
  
And…  
  
And Lena’s staring at her. And Kara must have said something weird, again. And she should probably try to fix it, like, now.  
  
So she blurts out, “Which, I mean, would make perfect sense for someone like _you_. Since you’re both so—” Kara gestures vaguely at Lena, who seems, at least, surprised. “I mean… you’re _amazing!_ You do so much good for the world. And, um. And if a superhero would want to date anyone, of _course_ it would be you, you know?” She cuts off her ramble with a helpless shrug, feeling suddenly shy.  
  
Because, well, because Lena’s still _looking_ at her. Except now it’s less a look like Kara did something weird, and more a look like—like she’d looked the last time she’d convinced Kara to deal them all a few rounds of blackjack on game night. A look like she’s been counting cards the whole time, and she knows just what Kara’s got as her hand.  
  
Which is bad, probably, because Kara doesn’t even really know what her own cards are doing right now.  
  
But it seems that Lena’s not interested in sharing whatever _that_ was about, because after a moment longer of silence, she tilts her head to the side and offers Kara a crooked smile. “Well,” she says, her voice soft, “maybe we could—we could talk more later? I want to learn more about you, Kara Zor-El. Preferably under better circumstances than playing hooky from work to hide out in an old conference room.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kara says, her voice weak under the force of Lena’s gaze. “We could do that.”  
  
“I’d like that,” Lena whispers. And then she takes a step closer, leans up on her toes, and presses a kiss to Kara’s cheek.  
  
By the time Kara can even think to bring her hand up to dumbly touch her suddenly-tingling face, Lena’s already left her alone in the room, with nothing but the old chairs and stacked boxes pushed to the corner, and the memory of Lena’s smile seemingly burned into her mind.  
  
-  
  
When Kara returns to her desk after a victory-lunch, she finds James leaning against the edge of it, playing idly with one of the fidget toys Winn had gotten her as a half-joke-half-‘no seriously stop clicking your pen all day’ gift. He lifts his head at the sound of her footsteps and brightens when he sees her.  
  
“Hey, you,” he greets Kara with a smile, setting the cube back onto her desk. “I heard you and Lena talked?”  
  
“Yeah,” Kara says as she steps towards him.  
  
“And everything went oka—oof!” James cuts off his question with a grunt as Kara barrels into him, wrapping her arms tight around his back and pressing her face against his neck.  
  
“Thank you,” she says, because she feels so much _better_ now. So relieved. A heavy weight lifted from her chest, and now she remembers what it’s like to really _breathe_. “I needed someone to give me a push.”  
  
“Anytime,” James replies with a slightly breathless chuckle as he drapes his arms loosely over Kara’s shoulders. “But, uh, I do need to breathe…”  
  
“You can breathe later.” Still, though, Kara loosens her grip on him just a little, giggling at his exaggerated gasp for air. “Don’t be a drama queen.”  
  
“I would never,” James says, hugging her tighter. “I’m glad everything worked out.”  
  
“Me too.” Kara sighs, savoring the feeling of his arms around her. “Lena’s just… she’s such a good person.” Her voice catches a little in her throat when she says it, but really all she can think about is how that brief, unextraordinary statement wasn’t _enough_ , could never be enough.  
  
James huffs out a quiet chuckle, pulling away from Kara to look her in the eyes. “She’d have to be,” he said. “She’s best friends with _you_.”  
  
And Kara spends the rest of the day at Catco feeling warm and light—slips her shoes off at her desk to make sure she can feel the ground beneath her feet.  
  
-  
  
Kara is, admittedly, sulking. Just a little bit. Not too much, because, really, she’s having a great time. It’s their first game night together since Lena had found out that two of her friends were secretly superheroes and another two were secretly moonlighting at an undercover government agency. So. Things have been going remarkably well, all things considered.  
  
Kara takes her plate and sneaks off into the kitchen to rifle through the half-empty boxes of snacks each of them had brought for the night. She takes a deep breath as she scoops a handful of oreos onto her plate, and tells herself to _relax_.  
  
‘Cause, well. The thing is, James and Lena are on the same Monopoly team.  
  
And Lena’s supposed to be on _Kara’s_ Monopoly team.  
  
The teams are a new thing, too. Because, honestly, none of them could have predicted just how _terrible_ Lena would be at Monopoly. Who could have predicted something like that? She’s so awful that Alex and Winn had made it a rule that Lena and only Lena had to play on a team with someone else, just so she couldn’t unbalance the whole game. And the unofficial—but still very important!—addendum to that rule was that Lena would play on _Kara’s_ team, since Kara had always been the one who would make really sad faces in Lena’s direction until she caved and handed over the final property card Kara needed for her monopoly, as well as part of her dinner.  
  
(“Lena!” Alex had tried once, waving her hand in front of Lena’s face. “Come on, she’s hustling you! Aren’t you supposed to be able to read that shit?”  
  
“Yeah…” Lena had responded dazedly, already handing over North Carolina Avenue despite Winn’s groans of frustration.  
  
And so the rule was born.)  
  
But tonight Lena had played on James’s side, sitting together all disgustingly cute in the little armchair that is, incidentally, _definitely_ only meant for one person. And they’d whispered to each other in faux-professional tones about ‘acquisitions’ and ‘capitalizing expenditures’ and ‘unfavorable variances for this lap of the board’, all in a way that sounded so much like _flirting_ that all Kara could do in response was stuff her mouth full of licorice and fidget with her little dog piece when it wasn’t her turn.  
  
Sulking, basically. But only a _little_ bit.  
  
The sound of someone else’s heartbeat approaching pulls Kara from her train of thoughts, and she hurriedly swallows the cookies she’d been _sampling_ just in time to turn and face Lena, carrying her own empty plate and giving Kara a small smile.  
  
(Things have been better between them, lately. True to her word, she’d knocked against Lena’s balcony door late one night with a tub of cookie dough tucked under her arm, and the two had spent hours just talking. Honestly, for the first time in way-too-long. She’d answered a whole slew of questions, ranging from such intensely personal questions as ‘what was it like on Krypton?’ or ‘why did you decide to be Supergirl?’ to questions that were so specifically _Lena_ that Kara had to stifle her own giggles before being able to answer.  
  
Because, honestly, who else would look at Kara so intensely while pressing her for details about the metabolic process of translating light waves into the ability to fly? Lena’s devastated, pained expression when Kara confessed that DEO scientists hadn’t been able to track the pathway beyond absorption of solar energy by endosymbiotic organelles in her epithelium—previously thought to be vestigial on Krypton, and whose DNA-analogue had resisted any and all attempts at isolation on Earth—still makes Kara smile.)  
  
“Hey,” she says gently, and sets her plate next to Kara’s. She reaches for the barely-touched bag of toasted coconut chips that absolutely nobody else would eat and pours a few for herself. “You know, this is the first time I’ve actually won against you in Monopoly.” She keeps her eyes on the bag, but her lips curl up into a smug little smirk, clearly content with her victory.  
  
“Yeah, well.” Kara hesitates, trying to think of an appropriately indignant response. But her thoughts are suddenly filled with nothing but the exact shade of Lena’s lipstick, and so her best idea is to reach over and steal one of Lena’s chips off her plate.  
  
Which she does, and then gags the second she tries to actually eat it.  
  
“Oh my god!” She coughs, reaching blindly for the half-finished Snapple Alex had left on the counter. She chugs some down, ignoring the way Lena _very rudely_ snickers at her.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Lena says, sounding not-at-all-sorry. “I should have warned you that those actually have some nutritional benefit.”  
  
Kara nods her agreement as she sets the now-her-drink aside. “You should have. That was pretty mean.” She crosses her arms and cocks her head to the side, letting a teasing smirk spread across her face. “Almost as mean as teaming up with James and ganging up on me.”  
  
Lena preens at the accusation, and Kara has to stifle a laugh. The only thing Lena loves more than being good at things is being good at things and also _winning_. “Well,” she says, leaning against the counter and making a show of looking at her nails, of keeping her tone cool and disinterested. “James told me a few things. About you. He said you once pretended you didn’t know how to play poker, and then by the end of the night you’d won all his chips. And his belt.”  
  
Kara struggles to fight back her grin, even as she can feel her cheeks heating up. Because, well, yeah. She had done that. She still has the belt, too, because every time she spots it in her closet she’s reminded of the way James had patiently explained the ranking of poker hands while she’d bit her lip and frowned down at her cards, asking what she was supposed to do if she didn’t have _any_ of those hands. The way his jaw had dropped and the realization had flashed in his eyes when she’d pouted and said, “Oh, you have a straight? Darn it, I only have a flush…”  
  
(Because Kara likes winning, too. And if there’s one thing she’s not above, it’s playing dirty during game nights.)  
  
“Maybe,” Kara says. It’s all Lena is gonna get her to admit. “But even so, I’m pretty sure Alex has been trying to warn you about that for weeks.”  
  
Lena shrugs, fighting a smile of her own. “Perhaps. But I thought she was just being…” She hesitates and looks over the side of the counter to the couch, where Alex and Winn were _still_ caught up in a fierce debate about whether or not Alex was cheating by downgrading all her hotels into houses just to reduce the amount of little house pieces available for everybody else to use. “…The way she is.”  
  
(So, okay, maybe all of them like winning. Maybe sometimes a little too much.)  
  
“Plus,” Lena adds, something sparkling in her eyes and a slight tint to her cheeks, “you’re pretty convincing, you know. Even if you are a dirty hustler, you’re still cute.”  
  
And Kara’s so caught up in the warm, fuzzy feeling that’s gathered in her belly in response to Lena calling her _cute_ that she doesn’t even realize quite what her brain’s trying to do until she hears her mouth say, “I think you’re cute, too.”  
  
And, well, luckily Kara’s only just barely started imagining flinging herself out the window to save herself the embarrassment before she notices the way Lena ducks her head, biting her lip between her teeth, the flush in her cheeks turning a deeper shade of red. So, okay, maybe that wasn’t a stupid thing to say.  
  
And of course it’s that moment that she hears a low chuckle from near her fridge, and turns to find James smiling at the two of them as he pours himself another glass of iced tea.  
  
(And, wow, isn’t Kara supposed to have super-hearing? What happened to that? She hadn’t even realized he was in the room. And, like, that’s sort of strange, since his breathing pattern tends to be one of the ones she’s able to identify and pick up on without even trying—a lingering habit from the early days she’d spent worried out of her mind that his next mission as Guardian would get him killed, although now she just finds the steady sound comforting.)  
  
James smiles, a little guilty, when Lena turns to face him as well. “Sorry, sorry,” he sets his glass on the counter to lift up his hand apologetically. “I didn’t mean to steal Kara’s thunder there.”  
  
Kara snorts, because she’s got about as much thunder happening right now as an early morning’s drizzle, but she quickly breaks out into a giggle at the sight of James jutting out a hip dramatically and flicking his wrist behind his head to mimic flipping his hair as he asks, “Tell me, though, am I cute, too?”  
  
“Yes,” Kara says at the same time Lena deadpans, “No.” And Kara can’t fight it anymore; she doubles over and cackles—James’s exaggeratedly hurt expression only making matters worse.  
  
But by the time she’s caught her breath, the mood seems to have shifted. Because she lifts her head only to find that James has stepped closer to the two of them, brushing up against Lena’s side and just sort of giving Kara this _look_ with that handsome, crooked smile and his warm, brown eyes that sort of make her feel a little breathless all over again.  
  
She’s snapped out of the moment, though, when Lena nudges his arm with her own, pulling his attention away. She stares up at him with widened eyes, and James frowns slightly in response, engaging in a silent conversation that Kara can’t follow at all.  
  
(And Kara’s _happy_ that they know each other well enough to communicate without a word. It’s a good sign for their relationship. And it shouldn’t make her feel awkward, it shouldn’t feel like an unwanted reminder that, despite the closeness that the three of them share during nights in like this, there’s still a layer of intimacy between Lena and James that Kara hasn’t been invited into.  
  
Even if she maybe wishes she were.)  
  
Finally, Lena nudges James again, a little harder, and he offers Kara a somewhat awkward smile. “Right, yeah,” he clears his throat. “So, Lena and I were planning to grab some dinner tomorrow and then head to her place to binge Star Trek. Did you know Lena’s a total space nerd?”  
  
Lena snorts and rolls her eyes, but the slight flush to her cheeks gives her away. “Anyway, um…” James continues, shrugging slightly, and there’s something strange in his tone that gives Kara pause. “Would you want to come along with us? I mentioned that you had never seen it before, and Lena about died on the spot.”  
  
“I did not!” Lena protests through her own laugh, shoving gently at James’s side. “Besides, which of us is it that cries every time at the end of Wrath of Khan?” She turns back to Kara with a smile on her face, the strangely tense mood of just a few moments ago seemingly broken. “We’d like it if you came along. Even if James is a liar. Would you want to?”  
  
And Kara smiles. But she just can’t quite bring herself to say ‘yes’. Because she may not always be the best at reading people— _especially_ humans—but even she can tell what’s going on here. The awkwardness, the hesitation, the silent conversations that are pretty clearly about her—it’s obviously reluctance. Lena and James probably had their date night all planned out, just the two of them, and then only later thought to bring her along.  
  
(And it _hurts_ , feels like some misplaced, unwanted pity. It reminds her of the first few months after Alex had found Maggie. Of all the stiff, last-minute invitations to Maggie’s apartment and the brief attempts by Maggie at whispered conversations about her from the other room that Alex had quickly shushed.  
  
She’d quickly stopped agreeing to tag along. Losing out on all the time with her sister she was used to hurt more than she’d even realized at the time, but it had still been preferable to feeling like she was messing up Alex’s night, feeling like Alex was too distracted worrying about Kara to focus on herself.  
  
Not to mention that the prospect of an evening spent alone in Lena’s overstuffed armchair curled up in a blanket, picking at a bowl of popcorn and watching Lena and James fight over the same footstool and banter about sci-fi as if they’d known each other for years… it’s not at the top of her list.)  
  
And so she shrugs, smiling apologetically. “I dunno,” she says, holding back her own wince when James and Lena’s smiles fade away nearly in-sync. “I wouldn’t want to step in on your date, you know? But maybe the next time we all get together for a movie night we could watch that instead?”  
  
Lena worries at her lip, frowning slightly before saying, “It’s not… it’s not stepping in at all. Actually, we were sort of—”  
  
“Sorry,” Kara interrupts. “But I need to go rescue Winn.” She gestures over to the couch, where Winn and Alex’s argument has evolved into some sort of game in which Alex, apparently, attempts to flick Monopoly houses at Winn’s forehead and bounce them into his drink.  
  
She steps past James and Lena, thankful for the distraction.  
  
-  
  
(When she drags Winn away from the scene with a quick, pointed look in Alex’s direction, Winn squirms against her arm and whines that _oh come_ on _, Kara, she was gonna make it soon!_  
  
And Kara has to amend her previous statement. She doesn’t understand humans at all.)  
  
-

**Today** 6:47 PM  
**[ _Lena,_ 6:47]: **Hi, Kara. How have you been?  
  
**[Kara, 6:48]:** hi lena!!!! i’ve been great, what’s up?   
  
**[ _Lena,_ 6:50]: **Nothing but the usual chaos here. But, actually, I wanted to ask you something.  
  
**[Kara, 6:50]:** :o  
  
**[ _Lena,_ 6:53]: **James and I snagged reservations tonight for that new steakhouse that opened recently, and we were both just talking about how much you’d probably want to try it. And I know a friend of a friend, so let’s just say I could change our reservation to three, if you’d like. Would you want to come meet us?  
  
**[Kara, 6:54]:** whaaat lena :( i can’t do that, it’s valentines day ya goof!!  
  
**[ _Lena,_ 6:55]: **Oh  
**[ _Lena,_ 6:55]: **Sorry  
**[ _Lena,_ 6:57]: **Did you have plans?  
  
**[Kara, 6:59]:** lol just watching movies with alex. right now we’re watching young frankenstein cause she won’t let me pick anything appropriate >:( but!! i don’t want to screw up your valentines date!!!! you two have fun! do a bunch of super cheesy romantic stuff, and make sure you tell me all about it tomorrow!!! i’ll hold you to taking me to that restaurant some other time, i promise  
  
**[ _Lena,_ 7:00]: **Alright.  
**Today** 7:12 PM  
**[ _Lena,_ 7:12]: **We’ll miss you tonight.  
  
**[Kara, 7:13]:** haha i’ll miss you too ♡♡♡  
  
**[ _Lena,_ 7:15]: **♥

-

“You gonna talk yet?” Alex asks through a mouthful of candy, resting her feet on Kara’s coffee table. “Or just mope around more?”

“I’m not moping,” Kara says. And she’s _not_. There’s nothing to mope about. It’s just… she knows James and Lena have another date tonight. (Less than a week since the last one! Like, who needs that many dates, anyway?) And she just. Just wants to check in, for a second. See if everything’s okay. Like, what if something dangerous happens and they need Supergirl? Or—or what if they’re not getting along well?

(Or what if they’re happier than she’s ever seen them around her? Happier without her there to interfere?)

But she can’t; she _knows_ she can’t. It’d be wrong and creepy and desperate.

And it’d be so easy.

She focuses on the TV, playing old _A Pup Named Scooby Doo_ reruns she’d forced Alex to watch with her while she not-moped at a volume loud enough that it drowned out the voices of their neighbors, loud enough to keep her senses from wandering.

“Yeah, sure,” Alex says, and she’s doing that thing where Kara can just _tell_ she’s rolling her eyes even without looking at her. “You look like you’re having a great time. Really enjoying my company. Taking advantage of my big sisterly advice and extensive experience in navigating weird relationship drama.”

Kara lazily swats in her direction. “Give me more candy. Jerk.”

Alex reaches into the bowl of mixed candy on her lap and tosses Kara another piece. She catches it absently, not even having to look away from the TV, and brings it to her mouth. A skittle, this time. And sour, too. Figures.

(The candy had been Kara’s idea originally, when she was barely fifteen. Alex had called the mixture of M&M’s and skittles “sacrilegious” at the time, and Kara had turned her nose up at her and declared that human taste buds were underdeveloped. Now, though, Alex is the one who shows up with six different bags of candy for game nights and eats it by the handful as their friends watch on in horror.)

“Gross,” she says, swallowing the skittle. “Gimme another.”

“You wanna talk about things?” Alex tosses her another, which she grabs out of the air and eats. Peanut M&M.

“Nuh-uh.” And another. Orange skittle.

“Too bad, we’re gonna.” A jelly bean, but a good one at least. “Did they invite you again?”

“No.” M&M. “Not this time. Maybe they realized—” She cuts herself off. _Realized they’re better off without me around_ on the tip of her tongue, but that’s not something she’s quite ready to admit. Not in front of Alex, at least. The rerun chooses that moment for a lull in the action, and in the silence Kara can hear the voices of two men talking a block away, then further, then— _don’t_ , she tells herself again. Alex tosses her another jelly bean, and she’s grateful for the brief distraction.

“Alex, should I have gone with them? When they asked?” Her voice wavers, and she swallows down her emotions along with the nasty popcorn-flavored jelly bean. “What if they think I’m—I don’t know. What if they don’t want to hang out with me anymore?”

Alex sighs, and Kara hears her dig around in the bowl for a moment. “You said you feel like a third wheel around them, yeah?” Kara nods, slumping lower on the couch. She catches the next piece of candy lobbed at her, and weakly smiles when she tastes the grape skittle on her tongue. Her favorite. “Well, if you’re gonna feel bad the whole time, then you shouldn’t go. But, Kara,” Alex’s tone is cautious, overly hesitant in a way that Kara hasn’t heard since she first came out to her, so long ago. “I’m not sure… what it is you _want._ ”

Oh.

Kara shrugs, turns further toward the TV. Easier to laugh at Velma searching for her glasses once again than to think. Because—because she doesn’t _know_ , is the thing. She doesn’t know what she wants. She _wants_ James and Lena to be happy. She _wants_ to see her two best friends in the world. She _wants_ to be invited to spend time with them because she’s wanted, rather than out of pity or an obligation to include her. She _wants_ things to be how they were, when Lena would hug her tight and press her nose to the spot where Kara’s shoulder meets her neck, when James would sling his arm around her shoulder and easily rest his chin on her head, when they would each tell Kara that she was important to them in their own unique ways, when James would take off his helmet and gloves in the safety of the DEO after a rough fight and brush Kara’s hair behind her ear with the gentlest touch and offer a little half-smirk that could barely contain his relief as he’d say, ‘good thing my sidekick’s so tough, huh?’, when Lena’s fingers would brush against Kara’s when they sat too-close together on her stiff office couch during lunch breaks in a way that made little tingles zing all throughout her arm, when—

 _Oh_.

 _Oh_ , and it’s as if the puzzle pieces are all falling into place. Little clues she’d discarded suddenly returning to her mind and fitting perfectly together. As clear in retrospect as the time that Alex had to explain why the kids at school would cringe at her when she bit into popsicles. And when it hits her, all she can think is _wapow_.

But Alex must notice the way Kara stiffens up from the force of her thoughts hitting her harder than a speeding bullet, because without warning she chucks three more pieces of candy Kara’s way. She catches them each, one by one, and tosses them into her mouth, chewing contemplatively. Letting her thoughts center around the questionable flavors mixing in her mouth rather than anything complicated. Rather than anything difficult.

“Hey,” Alex says suddenly. “Let’s get out of here. Go do something to take your mind off it.”

Kara groans, flopping to the side on the couch and pressing her face into the side of her arm. “Nooo.” She should stay. What if something goes wrong? What if James or Lena shouts and she can’t hear them? What if… what if one of them _texts_ her?

“Kara, I’m not gonna let you sit here wallowing and creeping on their date all night.”

Kara squirms around without lifting her head to kick vaguely in the direction of Alex’s legs. “Not creeping. Or wallowing.”

“Fine, fine,” Alex sighs dramatically. “Here, have another piece then.” She tosses a piece of candy to Kara.

Kara catches it quickly and crunches it between her teeth—only to jolt upright on the couch, flailing and spluttering and spitting the pieces of a broken penny into her palm.

“ _Alex!_ What the heck!?” She jerks towards Alex, the first time she’s really looked at her since she barged into Kara’s apartment with bags of food earlier that night and a tentative ‘heard it was date night’.

Alex, for her part, looks unsympathetic, simply raising an eyebrow. “Paying attention now?”

“You…! You—” Kara racks her brain, trying to find a word to encompass just how truly uncalled for that was. “You _butt!_ ”

But Alex just snickers in response, rather than being appropriately penitent, and so Kara lobs the spit-soaked and chewed-up fragments of penny back at her.

“Oh _God!_ ” Alex swipes roughly at her face, knocking the remains of the coin to the floor. “Kara, that was _vile!_ ” She levels her most intimidating glare at Kara—the very same glare that had once gently encouraged Winn to delete his incriminatory video of Alex swooning with Kara over a compilation of funny puppy videos they’d found during a rare moment of downtime.

Kara responds by sticking out her tongue.

Alex continues playing gruff for a moment longer before rolling her eyes and moving on. “Whatever. We’re going out, right now. No more pity parties, we’re having a real sisters’ night.” She sets the bowl of candy on the coffee table and jumps to her feet, entirely too enthusiastic. “Come on. Take me to that aquarium in China you keep telling us about.”

Kara snorts. It’s ridiculous, and yet she can’t say Alex’s teasing isn’t helping, either. She just… Alex always knows just what to do for her, even when _Kara_ can’t figure it out. And right now, Kara needs a distraction. “You can’t go that far, Al. Your fragile human body couldn’t take it, you’d be sick from the acceleration.”

But Alex has stepped away, already searching for the boots she’d kicked off into some unsuspecting part of Kara’s apartment. “That’s fine,” she calls, turning to face Kara with a cheeky grin, “I’ll just tie a bag to your arm.”

“Gross!” Kara tosses a pillow at her. Hard enough that, although Alex easily catches it, her elbows still buckle under the force, and the pillow smacks her face with a _whump_. But light enough that Kara knows that the way Alex spins on one foot in a near complete rotation before falling to the ground is just overdramatics.

“Oooh,” Alex whines from the floor. “My fragile human body! If only my superpowered sister would help me up!”

Kara floats over the back of the couch to easily lift Alex up with one hand and a smile just a little too fond for their current make-believe argument. She positions Alex just under her shoulder, ready to fly. Something they’ve done a thousand times before, but that Kara never gets tired of feeling. Of being able to share. She quickly scans the apartment for Alex’s boots and grabs them in her free hand before guiding them to the window.

(It’s late, it’s dark, and she’s feeling light again for the first time all night. Feels like it’d take nothing to lift her feet right up off the floor.

She’ll take her phone with her, though, just in case.)

“No transpacific flights,” Kara says, “but we can find an arcade somewhere where I can beat you at every game.”

Alex yanks at her hair, the feeling nothing more than a gentle pull. “In your dreams. Have fun carrying my prizes home when we’re done!”

-

(They fly to an arcade/bowling alley on the other side of the state, a place with nobody they know and no distractions. Kara soundly beats Alex at skee ball, hoops, and bowling. Because it seems that years spent tempering one’s strength and overthinking every movement are good for exactly one thing, and that thing is knowing the precise amount of force and grip to use to get a ball to go to the exact right place. Alex kicks butt at the machines, though, because what else is tactical arms training good for if not ‘mad gaming skills’, as she claims. They find a DDR machine and both suck so bad that Kara can hear a few people laughing at them over the sound of beeping machines and 00’s pop music.

They only leave when it’s time to close, and Kara carries a bag of cheap toys in one hand as she leads them to an all-night diner she’d seen during the flight over.

It’s the easiest—the most like herself—she’s felt in a long time.)

-

She wakes up late the next morning with a smile on her face and an off-brand stuffed Pikachu tucked beneath her arm, and she both figuratively and literally floats her way through a lazy brunch. So what, she asks herself, if she’s head-over-heels for someone who doesn’t feel the same way? And so what if that person is actually two people, who are also happily dating each other? She doesn’t need to sit around and pine any more than she already has. She doesn’t want to.

Because now she knows what all this has been about—all her weirdness and avoidance and _feelings_. And that means it doesn’t have to hurt anymore.

(She’s gone through much worse than a one-sided crush, even times-two, and she’s come out of it smiling, with the knowledge that there’s always still good to find if she’s just willing to look for it.

And, if her last relationship taught her anything, it’s that there’s more to love than a constant, Sisyphean struggle, an investment of emotions that will never pay off. Or, there’s supposed to be, at least.)

She can ride this out, she knows, and enjoy the feeling of the butterflies in her stomach along the way.

-

When she gets the text from James, it feels a little like the universe giving her another chance. The text itself is simple, a quick ‘ _Hey, kara. I know we haven’t seen each other much outside of work and work lately, and i thought the two of us could get together at my place for a movie night tonight. :)_ ’, but when she sees the notification it’s like suddenly remembering how to breathe.

It’s just—it’s been so _long_ since they’ve last been able to do this. Just the two of them, having one of their so-called Quarantine Movie Nights (named by Alex—although notably disputed by _none_ of their friends, thanks a lot—due to their shared taste in cheesy romantic comedies that none of the others could tolerate). James is right, she hasn’t been around much. She knows it, and she wants to fix things. She wants things to go back to how they were, before she panicked and tried to run. Because she misses him. Misses Lena. Misses both of her best friends.

(And she _doesn’t_ deal well with loneliness. She’s traveled across galaxies to find her new family, her new home, and she wants to cling to them. Wants to keep them in her life at any cost.

Her friends wisely avoid mentioning that her evening patrol routes of the city coincide too closely to their own homes. And only Winn knows of her rare, longer trips, flying high above distant cities and listening for voices, for the even breaths of sleep. She visits Eliza, and Lucy, and even Cat Grant.

She needs them all in her life. She’s not Kara Zor-El without them.)

And so she wastes no time replying to James, telling him she’ll meet him at his place and that he’d better have a stockpile of ice cream when she gets there. She smiles through the rest of her day, finally excited to have a real night in with her friend again.

-

Of course, Kara notices the second heartbeat in James’s apartment the moment she steps into the building. It’s not like something like that could be kept hidden from her without a serious investment in leaden infrastructure. But it’s not like she can just waltz back out, either. She’s not gonna bail on James at the very last second, even if she does have a fairly good guess as to who else is in that apartment with him. Besides, this is an opportunity for her. A chance to really show that she’s ready to put her own _feelings_ aside, and enjoy their happiness.

And so she walks up the stairs, waves ‘hi’ to the nice old lady on the floor below (who she’s _pretty sure_ knows that Kara’s the very same person who once passed out on the fire escape just outside her window, one floor too low, and then sucked down about a half-dozen laddus while listening to stories about her grandchildren), and knocks at James’s door with a smile on her face that feels only _slightly_ forced.

It’s Lena who opens the door, of course. She leans against the frame with a somewhat sinister grin. “Surprise,” she says.

“Hi, Lena!” Kara brings up her hand to wave, before remembering: “Oh, right—I’m surprised!”

Lena slumps, her smile fading away into an overly dramatic scowl. “God damn it.”

“Hey, Kara.” James steps up behind Lena, pulling the door open further. “Come in! Don’t worry about her, she may have gotten a little too into the whole mastermind thing.” He wiggles his fingers for emphasis. Looks hopefully at Kara as if she had _any_ idea what he meant.

“Uh… mastermind?” Kara takes a step into the apartment and laughs, nervous. Because, wow. Things are… this whole night has _not_ gone according to plan, and she’s less than five minutes into it. She’d sort of expected James to greet her at the door with a tub of her favorite butterscotch ice cream that he couldn’t stand, handing it eagerly towards her as if it caused him pain just to be in its offensive proximity.

Instead, there’s two half-empty glasses of wine set up on his counter, and a distinct absence of Netflix on his TV. Not to mention, he’s got on a pair of slacks and a tight collared shirt that’s always caught Kara’s eye at work—a far cry from their usual movie-night attire. And _Lena_ is—well. When Lena wraps her arm around Kara’s and begins to guide her to James’s couch as if she’d never been to his place before, Kara certainly _notices_ things. Like, how the neckline of her dress dips so distractingly low that the simple task of walking suddenly seems a lot more difficult.

It’s a lot. And it leaves Kara feeling criminally underdressed in her sweats and galaxy kitten t-shirt.

“Did I, um…” she stutters, distracted by the feeling of Lena’s hand curling tighter around her bicep. “Did I… miss something?” She could still leave. In fact, she probably should leave.

(Instead, she follows behind Lena like a lost little puppy, her thoughts overwhelmed by the way that the gentle touch of Lena’s fingers against her arm felt like little ripples of warmth against her skin, even though she knows Lena runs a few degrees cooler than she does.

Her legs bump against the front of the couch before she even realizes she’s gotten there, knocking it precariously onto two legs for a short moment. Well. Good thing she had a guide, then.)

She turns to James as she sits, toying nervously with her glasses. “It—it _was_ supposed to be tonight, right? The, um, the movies? ‘Cause, like, if this is a— _you know_ , then I could, like…?”

“Woah, hey, it’s okay! You haven’t missed anything,” James tries to reassure her as he takes a nervous step towards the couch. And Kara, well. She still feels a little like she’s taken a wrong turn and somehow tripped into a weird alternate Earth, but. She scoots to the side of the couch anyway, making room for James to sit down between herself and Lena so they can maybe get this confusingly-formal-movie-night-slash-interrupted-date started. Because there’s enough room for three on this couch, sort of. So. There’s really no reason for things to be weird. Even if this is maybe more of a dive straight into the deep-end of resolving her tangled mess of feelings for her two closest friends, as opposed to the gentle tiptoeing in she’d expected.

“Didn’t miss anything…” Lena mumbles under her breath, lowering her head. She takes a moment to huff out a sigh through her nose before grabbing Kara’s arm. And she’s so caught up in trying to figure out what _that_ was supposed to mean that it takes her a solid few seconds to realize that Lena’s actually tugging on her arm, trying uselessly to pull her closer to the center of the couch.  
  
She overcorrects, hovering slightly above the couch and knocking against Lena’s side with the next yank.

“Er, what I meant is—” James hesitates, and pushes down on Kara’s shoulder, lowering her back onto the couch. “It is tonight. The movies.” He takes a deep breath, and sits down himself, leaving Kara sandwiched between them in a way she was _totally not prepared for_. The smell of James’s cologne and Lena’s perfume mixing together and making her feel a little dizzy. “I mean, it _was_ tonight. That’s… that is what I said. Yes.”

“Okay…?” Kara says. Because, well. What else is there to say. James hasn’t rambled this much around her since their very first date, when he’d nervously listed about a dozen different restaurants he’d made sure had open tables.

“We may have tricked you,” Lena says, leaning in even closer, letting her hand brush against Kara’s thigh. “Or rather, I convinced James to trick you. I _am_ a Luthor and all.” She offers Kara a devious smirk and a wink. “I need to express my devious whims somehow.”

Kara looks back to James, lost. He just shrugs, his nervous expression somewhat overshadowed by a tender smile. “She _is_ pretty wicked.”

“Oh.” Kara blinks. Looks owlishly between the two of them. James slings his arm over the side of the couch, pressing gently against Kara’s shoulder. And Lena’s crooked smile grows wider, showing the barest hint of teeth between red, red lips that leaves Kara feeling, inexplicably, like a cornered animal.

Which, it turns out, maybe she sort of is.

“We needed to get you alone somehow,” Lena continues. “We wanted to talk to you. About us.”

And, oh, it’s like the feeling of diving into the chilly waters of the city’s bay to cool off after extinguishing a warehouse fire. Sudden, shocking, cold. Sharp enough to draw Kara’s attention away from the dizzying sound of her own rushing heartbeat and back into the moment.

“You,” she repeats, slowly. Because, crap. Crap! This isn’t part of her very-solid plan! That had involved a quiet night in with James spent watching bad movies and internally listing all the reasons he was better off as her handsome, muscular, platonic friend with the beautiful face rather than… anything else. And then probably going home and eating a few spoonfuls of peanut butter later, in case she still wasn’t convinced.

But instead, she’s been found out. Or so she assumes. Caught staring one too many times, caught awkwardly stumbling over what should have been a friendly interaction, caught blushing and biting her lip and laughing too hard at a joke—which, _apparently_ , was one of her tells— _caught_.

(She swallows, and braces herself for the worst.)

“The—the three of us, I mean,” Lena adds, her voice slightly weaker than before. “James and I. And… and you. We’re—uh…” She falters there, her hand slipping away from Kara’s thigh to rest almost protectively at her side. But even still, she keeps her back straight, her head lifted proudly. “We’re trying to ask you if you’re interested in a date,” she says, finally. Her voice steady once more, and her piercing green eyes intently focused on Kara’s.

“Romantically, we mean,” James adds hastily, and when Kara turns her head to face him it’s almost as if the room spins around her—and for a moment, all she can hear is the _thump, thump_ of her racing heart pounding in her ears, and her own internal mantra of ‘ _calm down, it can’t mean, it can’t be_ —’

Except, well, maybe it _can_. Because James is looking at her with an almost-hopeful expression, smiling gently at her when their eyes meet. And when Kara hears Lena take a slow, unsteady breath and clasp her hands together, she realizes that the frantic heartbeat drumming in her ears isn’t actually her own.

(And it seems wrong, almost, the idea that Lena and James would actually be _nervous_ around her. They’re—they’re two of the strongest people she knows, each in their own ways. And while she knows better than most that strength isn’t necessarily the same as _confidence_ , it still feels foreign to her. The idea that Lena and James would be uncertain about _Kara’s_ feelings, of all things.

It feels wrong, but then Kara thinks of the way Lena hides her nerves behind a mask of steel and perfectly-applied eyeliner, of the way it took her over two months to stop referring to _their_ friends as just _Kara’s_ and another two to quit calling herself a ‘stray’ Kara picked up, of the way she’s been cruelly, unfairly trained to always wait for the other shoe to drop. And Kara thinks, too, of James’s confessions to her late one night—what felt like a lifetime ago—that he’d first learned to hide when he was seven years old and forced into a pair of handcuffs and had never totally broken the habit, of the way he used to joke with a tight smile that his two closest friends could fly up, up, and away without him whenever they needed a break.

She thinks of _James and Lena_ , inviting her to working lunches she had no reason to attend, tossing pizza crusts to her during game nights, dropping off cinnamon rolls to her desk in the morning and brownies in the afternoon. Reaching out to her all the ways they knew how.

And suddenly it makes sense. Not—not like finding a missing puzzle piece, but tilting her head _just so_ and finally seeing the other side of an optical illusion.)

“I—you—” Kara stutters, voice thick and throat unexpectedly tight. “ _Really?_ ”

James shuffles hesitantly beside her. “If you’re uncomfortable…”

“I’d love to,” Kara interrupts. Doesn’t need to hear the rest. “To date, I mean. Romantically.” She bites down on her lip, stops herself from going into some disaster of a ramble. Instead, she ducks her head, glances briefly up at James, then Lena through the wisps of hair that had fallen free from her loose ponytail. “I—I think I’ve wanted that for a long time, honestly.”

“That’s—” Lena starts, but hesitates, and Kara looks up to find Lena searching her face nervously, her eyes darting between Kara’s. “Well, you could say we’ve been thinking about it for a long time, too.” She huffs out a laugh—a short, self-deprecating little thing that so often follows any semblance of emotional confession, that’s always left Kara burning with the want to pull Lena close and tell her that she _matters_. Her thoughts matter. They’re not—they’re not a joke.

And it’s that drive that makes her brave, that makes her reach for Lena’s stiff, clasped hands. Makes her meet Lena’s cautious gaze. Makes her say, “I want to kiss you now.”

Lena freezes beside her, briefly glancing over Kara’s shoulder at James before finally letting herself _breathe_ , her shoulders relaxing and her lips curving into a smile. “I think,” she says, a playful sparkle to her eyes, “that that can be arranged.”

It’s Kara who closes the distance between them. Reaches to cup Lena’s cheek carefully—so carefully—in her hand as she brushes their lips together tentatively. Lena tilts her head to the side, bringing them closer together, flicking her tongue playfully against Kara’s lip. And when she lets out a soft little sigh warm and content against Kara’s lips, Kara—oh, she _breaks_.

The gentle brush of her hand against Lena’s cheek turns to fingers desperately twining through long, dark hair as Kara pulls Lena closer to her, kisses her with a need she truly hadn’t been prepared for. Alex’s words ring briefly through her head— _I’m not sure what it is you want_ —before they’re chased away for good by the taste of Lena’s lipstick, the feeling of her tongue brushing against Kara’s, of James’s hand resting against her shoulder, tracing circles along her back with his thumb.

 _This_ , she realizes. _This_ is what she wanted. And it’s with that thought that she hears herself embarrassingly—mortifyingly, humiliatingly—sniffle. And when Lena pulls back to look at her in concern, she comes across as blurred through Kara’s tears.

“That’s not—” Lena hesitates, lets out a breathless half-laugh as if to hide away her own uncertainty. “That’s not _generally_ the reaction I hope for when I kiss women I like.”

“No, no—it’s—” Kara sniffles again, even as she can’t fight back her smile. “I’m sorry. It’s good—really good. I’m just… _happy_.”

And she is. She really, really is. Happier, still, when Lena pulls her close and kisses her again, deep and needy. Lena kisses her like she’s trying to cling to the moment, like she can prove just how long she’s been waiting and _wanting_ with nothing more than the press of her lips, the quick flicks of her tongue, the barely-there bite of her nails digging into Kara’s shoulders. By the time she pulls back, Kara can barely remember how to breathe, panting unevenly and nearly whimpering at the loss.

And Lena looks no better off, her cheeks a deep red and her hair just slightly mussed from Kara’s own fingers. She bites her lip and offers Kara an almost shy smile—which quickly turns into an honest-to-god _giggle_ when she tilts her head to the side. “Stop gloating back there, you ass,” she says, and Kara feels the reverberations from James’s muffled laughter against her back.

“’M not gloating,” James says, and Kara can _hear_ the smile in his voice. “I’m just—” he shrugs, bumps Kara’s shoulder as he reaches awkwardly around her to playfully nudge at Lena’s arm. “Kara’s lucky, is all. You’re a catch.”

Lena rolls her eyes, turns her head as if to hide the way her blush has only grown worse. “You’re a _romantic_ ,” she replies, and the way she spits out the word like it’s some kind of terrible insult has Kara giggling, flipping around in James’s arms to bury her face against his neck and wrap him up in a tight hug. Lets herself get temporarily lost in the sound of his heartbeat, in the feeling of his arms firm and heavy around her shoulders.

(It’s the kind of hug that she used to call The Dangerous Kind, shortly after they’d first agreed to go back to being just friends. The kind where she’d hold on too tight, where he’d let his fingers run through her hair, where they both would cling too long to the moment, as if trying to memorize the feel of each other, until Kara’s mind would run crazy with _what if_ s for the rest of the day.

But it doesn’t feel like that, now. It feels soft and warm, and it feels like Kara’s gonna kiss the heck out of James the second he lets go.)

“I missed this,” she whispers into the side of James’s neck, then pulls back to look up into his eyes.

James smiles, cups Kara’s cheek with his hand. “You’re not an easy person to get over,” he says, and his voice is soft and warm with just the slightest hint of playfulness, and Kara closes the distance between them.

And if kissing Lena feels a little like the moments of freefall just after she’s stepped off Catco’s rooftop before she takes off in flight, then kissing James feels like a summer afternoon’s flight low above the streets of National City. Warm and familiar and a little like being at home. Kara sighs into the kiss, tilting her head and nipping at James’s lips as he pulls her closer, curls his fingers through her hair.

 _I missed this_ , she thinks again as she flicks her tongue against James’s, slides her hand down from its modest position at his shoulders to rest against his muscled chest. Except, it’s not just that. Because kissing James doesn’t feel like it had during their short-lived attempt at dating. It didn’t feel like a frantic rush to find a moment to themselves in-between disasters, it didn’t feel like a constant give-and-take between their relationship and the rest of their lives, and it especially didn’t feel like each kiss they shared was an apology, a promise of _maybe, someday_.

(They’ve been through so much now, together and apart. Kara knows now, more than ever before, just what it means to fight for something that matters. It’s something she’s been forced to do, time and time again. And this? It matters more than anything.)

By the time James pushes gently at her shoulder, pulls away from her with a final, chaste peck, Kara realizes she’s crawled onto his lap, pressed against his chest, flushed and _hot_. Lena’s staring, her lip caught between her teeth and a glint in her eyes that sends a spark down Kara’s spine.

“Spend the night,” Lena’s voice is low, _sultry_ , and Kara rocks her hips against James’s thigh involuntarily.

“Yes,” she says, “Rao, yes.”

-

Kara wakes sandwiched between her two best friends to the sound of her text notification, her phone vibrating against the coffee table a room away. She groans, resting her forehead briefly against Lena’s chest before beginning the process of untangling herself from James’s grip without alerting him. After a brief and, if she’s being totally honest, not-particularly-inspired search for her shirt, she gives up and drifts out of the bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

(She’d set up a special text alert for Alex ages ago, but she doesn’t need to hear the chimes to know it’s her. There’s only one jerkhead who regularly texts her before seven in the morning.)

**Today** 6:28 AM  
**[ _Alex,_ 6:28]: **You never told me how the movies with James went, nerd. Pizza tonight?  
  
**[Kara, 6:32]:** i fell asleep!! and i can’t do dinner tonight, james and lena asked me on a date!!!!!!!  ♥_♥♡ love you xo  


  
Kara moves to set her phone back on the table before thinking better of it. Instead, she flicks off the volume and rests it gently on the couch cushion. She floats her way back to bed, ignoring the repeated, muted vibrations as she curls up between Lena and James.

Kara fits easily in the space between them, like she was always meant to be there.


End file.
